Up until this point, we’ve been running two different blogs: Inside Kin, an insider’s look through progress updates and guest posts from our very own community members, and the Kin Blog, a more official communications channel for announcements and bigger updates. Moving forward, we will be combining these into one blog — the Kin Blog. We’re doing this to organize content in a way where you will be able to find a one-stop-shop for all things Kin.

We are in the process of merging the blogs and will eventually deactivate Inside Kin on September 6.

You can expect the same great material in a more streamlined manner for your viewing pleasure.

We’ve known it from the start, but we needed a stronger way to tap into it…The immense talent, passion, and creativity…it’s beaming from our community from every continent.

The Community Team is in a constant state of brainstorming, ideation, and fruition. It’s what we do best. And one of our most recent brainstorming sessions turned into a beautiful success. We called the artists of our Kin community to step forward, reveal their talents, and get to work.

Our goal: Create a Kin-centric map of the world to track our community.

Our result: A surprising amount of new and old faces who jumped at the opportunity to show off their talents. They helped us realize our vision with an abundance of creativity and a strong desire to take part in this shared dream of exposing Kin to the world.

Without further ado, our winner is:

You can call that winner Royce, a graphic design and blockchain enthusiast, but many call him Speekrcreep which is his producer name for the electronic music scene.

What was your inspiration for creating the map?

“When working on the map, I tried to tell a small story. the lines connecting different countries is representing a chain of blocks delivering different types of digital content and services between places that would never come in contact with each other, visualizing the reach of blockchain technology directly from peer to peer.”

What made you want to learn more about Kin?

“I’ve been trying to find the perfect project I could use in the long run for selling digital goods and services in blockchain space and I feel Kin will allow me to do so as well as reach a larger demographic of users who would otherwise never search for our type of products.”

Tell us something else about yourself!

“When I’m not talking or messing around about in the blockchain space, I run a music electronic music label based out of Windsor Ontario, called ‘Trebaltek Records.’ I am also an in house mastering engineer for “DetroitUnderground” and I work as a personal photographer/videographer with marz.la.”

You can follow this Jack of all trades on twitter: @trebaltek

Website: trebaltek.ca

Kik group: @trebaltek “Anyone who joins our Kik channel gets a chance to win 10,000 KIN+ Trebaltek Teeshirts.”

As time goes on, we will pin-point where all of our community members reside on this stunning new piece of artwork. We will keep you updated and share with you our findings as Kin continues to grow and expand to every country of the world.

We also wanted to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who submitted a design . Your hard work and dedication are revealing more and more of what Kin is all about. This is only the beginning. We had no idea how many people would come out of the woodwork to reveal their artistic passion and talents in the graphic design world and we are excited to see what comes next…

What do YOU want to create to help Kin shine? Give us your ideas and let’s keep the conversations flowing. It’s what our community does best!

Who Run the World!? Kin was originally published in Kin Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Kin Standalone App has been a hot topic around the office these days. Referring to it as “The Standalone App” is almost starting to sound a bit bizarre after so many great, creative names have been voiced out in the open.

Only great ideas filled with ambition, passion, and determination ever truly turn into full fledged decisions. Luckily, this idea is finally becoming a reality.

This reality will start in a beta test, of course. This means we see it as a name in exploration – a title being tested for the masses! And we’re excited to see where our chosen name will take us.

From now on you can call it…

Kinit

Some of our dedicated followers may remember that we asked for your initial thoughts, opinions, and wildest ideas when coming up with the name. And you delivered with flying colors!

Now, we are calling the community to action once again to help us with the next vital stage of this app.

Your voice will help us decide how Kinit should look on your home screen. Check out the mockups below. Which app icon do you like best?

So head on over to Telegram, answer our poll, and keep the excitement up for when Kinit hits mass release!

What’s in a Name? Kin Edition was originally published in Kin Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

That’s right, you guessed it! Our last, but certainly not least, Blockchain Team, deserves a round of applause and a proper introduction. We are always excited to share any and all updates about Kin along the way, but we love getting to show-off our geniuses causing mayhem behind the scenes.

The goal of this team is to provide the right blockchain infrastructure to support millions of daily Kin users. The team is basically the base foundation layer, which includes features and systems that are not necessarily glamorous but absolutely necessary. Our blockchain team is focused on: scale, performance, security, decentralisation & privacy. Ever since we learned that Ethereum’s infrastructure can’t scale to the needs of Kin on its own, the team has been working on a migration process to support Kin’s future!

Another major responsibility of the blockchain team is the KRE — Kin Rewards Engine. This is a major component of injecting a financial utility into the Kin ecosystem by providing a new way for developers from all over the world to monetise by providing Kin to their users.

And now let’s meet “The New Kin on the Block(chain)”™

Tanya Rofman, Technical Product Manager

Tanya joined Rounds (now Kik & Kin Ecosystem Foundation) 2 years ago as a SQA engineer, but quickly started filling many roles and rose to challenges in filling different gaps — be it leading the QA team, analyzing BI and data, managing products from initial conception to fully delivering them to production, and planning and executing complex projects that require coordination with multiple teams. In the last year, she led as project manager for the R&D team in Tel Aviv, focusing on video chat and experiences in Kik messenger.

When she’s not at work, you will find her photographing (very creative Instagram account), meditating at the beach, and travelling.

You can follow her on Linkedin and Medium.

Her motto is: “TraveLivExplore”

Gadi Srebnik, Technical Development Leader

Gadi has been with our team since the beginning — almost 10 years to be exact. In his time there he managed the server team, definitions of protocol, and media. He likes designing systems and understanding their requirements. Gadi’s favorite part of what he does is looking at the big picture and developing solutions to improve it!.

When he’s not at work, he is probably playing chess or planning his fifth trip to Vegas to play some poker.

You can follow him on Linkedin.

His motto is: “גיוון זה הכיוון” (variation is the right direction)

Yossi Rizgan, Android Developer

Yossi is an Android developer. He is an experienced client side developer, ranging from fancy UI to complex systems. He has interest in software architecture and design and strives to produce clean, maintainable and testable code.

When he is not busy talking with the blockchain, he is trying to share his knowledge by mentoring at TLV Android Academy, and doing some good to society by volunteering as an Android developer at Startach.

He’s also taking care and nurturing his collections of minions and other tiny cute creatures (see below).

His motto is “Hakuna Matata” — well, at least that’s what his daughters play on TV at home.

You can follow him on: Linkedin, Medium and StackOverflow.

Avi Shevin, iOS Developer

Avi is an iOS developer with an emphasis on design and architecture. He has experience with many programming languages and platforms, which allows him to choose the right tool for the job.

Avi is a fast learner who’s always eager to learn new techniques and technologies. It’s common around our office to hear Avi say “We can’t do this, it’s not possible”… but then 10 minutes later, he’s completed the job effortlessly. (We call it ‘Avi’s 10 minutes rule.’)

Both when he’s in work and out of work, he excels at snarky comments and is generally disagreeable. We love him for it.

You can follow him on Linkedin.

David Bolshoy, Software Engineer

David is an experienced software engineer and a passionate entrepreneur. He is a seasoned System Architect and has been with our team for more than 3 years. His responsibilities include technological leadership and hands-on development, delivering scalable and cost-effective solution architectures, and many more.

You can follow him on Linkedin.

Ory Band, Senior Backend Engineer

Ory is a senior Backend engineer and an Open data hacktivist. He is passionate about distributed systems, scaling, Golang and Python. In addition to this, he volunteers at the Public Knowledge Workshop and uses his skills to enhance democracy, government transparency, and empowering citizens.

When he’s not at work, he plays electric guitar and piano, and has a GSD Border Collie mutt that he brings with him to the office (see below).

You can follow him on http://ory.band, medium.com/@oryband, twitter.com/oryband, and linkedin.com/in/oryband.

His motto is: “Never stop learning, never stop teaching.”

Ron Serruya, QA & Automation Engineer

At 20 years old, Ron is the youngest member of the team!

He joined our team 1.5 years ago, first as a QA Intern with Rounds Entertainment. His great performance led to a full-time QA position, and we’re thrilled to have him on the Kin team.

When he’s not at work, Ron is a video gaming and PC building enthusiast, loves music, soccer, coding and learning new stuff. He hopes to start his CS University degree next year.

His motto is: “没问题” — Moumantai (No problem/Take it easy).

Oded Noam, Blockchain Architect

Oded is an experienced entrepreneur, software engineer, software architect and technical researcher. In the past few years, Oded worked on blockchain design and algorithmics, cryptocurrencies and token economies, software architecture, distributed systems, system architecture, multimedia streaming, network protocols (L2-L7) and network security.

He is highly professional and hard working and always up-to-date on the latest technologies and acquires required skills quickly. Oded often finds elegant and robust solutions to complicated problems.

When he’s not at work, he’s probably at the playground with his two sweet girls.

You can follow him on Linkedin and Medium.

His motto is: “Measure twice, cut once”.

Bunchy

Bunchy is a senior happiness engineer. He specializes in sleeping on his back and being overall super-cute. He’s also afraid of balloons.

His motto is: “Woof.”

Introducing: Blockchain Team was originally published in Kin Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Content invites joy and this joy turns into further ideas, and this chain of reactions is where our world is shifting to.

We speak often about reaching the masses to make Kin the most talked about cryptocurrency in the world. But how do we DO this? What steps are we taking to make this concept a reality? Long-term we have a lot in the works but in the short-term, we are investing our time by observing and getting to know our community members. Because at the end of the day, they are the reason word is spreading as organically as it is.

Community members are stepping up by creating content, speaking up and spreading positivity in our channels, and they are easing the pathway for Kin newcomers. One community member in particular caught our eye initially on a whim. He is a creator, positive speaker, and completely relatable. The conversation started with just a sticker…

“I am one of the ‘masses’ that KIN aims to target. Crypto continues to be a difficult space for me to comprehend. I am not that tech savvy and it moves far too fast. For an everyday person, the concept of a blockchain is difficult to grasp.” — Briefcase Brady

He is a guy who “gets it.” He believes in Kin and understands what it can evolve into, and better yet, he is truly one from the masses.

“I didn’t realise until recently that what I was searching for was a project that simplified the whole space; something that didn’t take a degree in computer sciences to comprehend its use case. . . and that’s when I found KIN.”

So let’s bring it back to this sticker. Many of you reading may know that sticker packs emerged from Kik and became the first type of content to excite the idea of further content creation in the Kin world. In our community team, we often speak about members in our channels who stick out to us and we couldn’t stop the excitement over Brady’s custom sticker creations he and others use in our Telegram channels.

“Every time I create a sticker, I smile. Every time someone posts one of my stickers, I smile. I guess my inspiration for creating stickers is to spread more smiles.”

This is the exact sentiment we hope the rest of our Kin believers can relate to. Content invites joy and this joy turns into further ideas and this chain of reactions is where our world is shifting to.

Brady is a jack of all trades. We found this out by asking him where his motivation lied in creating these stickers. His unique answer put more smiles on our faces…

“Because of KIN’s focus on creating ease of usage and targeting the masses, I have a desire to create complementary artistry to help convey the message and play a part in growing the community. I believe my talents in the areas of design, art, and music will allow me to reach a wide variety of people. My goals include continuing the development of my KIN designs to not only be available in sticker packs, but on apparel and accessories as well…

In order for KIN to achieve this level of change, it will take all of us. Mass adoption doesn’t happen when a corporation commits, it happens with each individual.”

We couldn’t have found a better way to say it than how Brady expressed it himself…This insight comes straight from our community, no strings attached. Brady is just one wonderful example of how much passion, time, and energy is put into creating new Kin related content and ultimately shining light on what Kin is doing and what we are all about.

You can follow Brady’s endeavors here:

Website: www.briefcasebrady.com

Twitter: @briefcasebrady

Facebook: /briefcasebrady

Now it’s your turn. We know you are out there. We see a lot of the content you create to excite others to join in the journey of Kin. But there is much we don’t see: Make your presence known and show us what you’ve got. We are interested and we want to highlight you and your work. Let’s reach the masses by letting our creativity spark!

Kin: Connecting the Masses Through Content was originally published in Kin Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Kin is back at it again!!!

You already know our amazing Standalone App team and Ecosystem team, and it is now time for you to be introduced to the Kin Community team.

The Kin Community team interacts with the Kin community on a regular basis and is in the frontline of all social media outlets.

Please give a warm welcome to the team members:

Yoel Rivelis, Community Manager

The first time Yoel saw snow was last week in Waterloo’s Kik office.

Three months before then he joined Kik to lead and manage the Kin crypto community and do what he loves. He studied economics and political science in one of the best cities in the world — Tel Aviv and even got to live in San Francisco and New York for a while.

He is mostly about people; igniting new relations and bringing value to others. He founded and managed a political youth organisation, alumni organisations and different leadership programs. Spare time? Not much of it, but he cooks, he likes camping and the greatest moment for him would be lighting the fire under the coffee pot in a middle of a hiking trip.

“Everyday brings a new opportunity and a new prospective. That’s why I love what I’m doing at Kin. It’s a new industry, interrupting the economical models as we know them. I love Kin for being the intersection between economy, tech and community, remembering always that people come first. We win together by working together”.

His motto: “work hard, play hard.”

You can follow him on: LinkedIn and Instagram

Allison Morse, Community Moderator

Allison is an American dreamer who immigrated to her ideal location of Tel Aviv. She’s a learner soaking in new experiences from all ends of the spectrum.

Amongst a variety of things, her main background is in professional theatre and she uses her singing voice to tell stories. In short, she’s about sharing the true, raw, human experience.

“I am proud to say that I am recently new to the crypto world. I hold a perspective very similar to the masses we are trying to reach. My insights are uninhibited, my questions are far and wide, and my knowledge grows exponentially the more I engage in our amazing community. Because of this, I really connect to what we are doing here.”

Her motto: “Breathe in curiosity and exhale creativity.”

You can follow Allison on: LinkedIn and Instagram

Gary Rana, Community Moderator

Gary moderates from his home town, in the “Silicon Valley” of Canada (Waterloo ON.) His background has always been tech related from working with companies like Telus, Horizon Engineering Solutions, and now Kin! Some of his passions include tech, motor sports, and social events.

Gary is all about innovation, experiences, and people! Being from Waterloo, he is always a block away from seeing new cutting edge technology, innovations, and ideas created by people from all over the globe. He loves knowing and continuously learning about new upcoming trends and ideas.

“My passion lies in people. I love the fact that the community is super involved and such a huge part of this project. I get the chance to talk to real investors, subject matter experts, and newcomers who are just opening the door to the crypto space. This allows me to gain insight from the community and devise the ideas to successfully build this project together. Looking forward to the future and the growth of the Kin community.”

His motto: “Short term pain, long term gain.”

You can follow Gary on: Reddit :)

Doron Segev, Community Moderator

Doron is an energetic, strong-minded woman who has a curiosity and appetite for life. She is always down for a good documentary, a hip-hop class, and a glass of wine. Friends and family first!

Doron has passions in her life — from innovation, politics, music, documentaries, travelling and cooking, to dancing hip hop. She is always looking to evolve and learn.

“It’s all about the people! I love the fact that being a moderator lets you connect with the community and get to know the people behind the nicknames.”

Her motto: “But First, Chamomile Tea.”

You can follow her on: LinkedIn and Instagram

Galen Heinke, Community Moderator

Galen broadcasts to us from Thornbury, Ontario. He is currently studying commerce at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He’s in his 4th year, majoring in Finance.

Galen’s all about technology and innovation. He has always been interested in new technology and in early 2017, that developed into a passion for cryptocurrency. He is also into skiing, traveling, sailing, and cars.

“I love what I do at Kin because I have been working with this project since before the TDE and it has been awesome to watch our community and product develop. I have been using Kik messenger since its launch and can’t wait to see the implementation of Kin. I love seeing the community members engaging in discussion about possible uses of the token. The cool thing about being a community team member is that I learn new things regularly from our members.”

His motto: “Character is how you treat those who can do nothing for you.”

Maayan Farchi, Community Moderator

Maayan is from Herzliya, Israel, not far from Tel-Aviv. She’s studying Computer Science at the IDC (second year).

Maayan loves innovating and to work with people to make her ideas happen. She has a lot of passion for math and coding (even though it can be very frustrating). When she has some spare time (which never happens) she loves running and listening to music.

“I think my favourite thing is just to hang out with people who make me laugh.”

“I was on the support team from the beginning, even before the TDE started. I watched how the community and how Kin developed, and it has been really exciting taking a part of this process and this project which I truly believe in. I think that the crypto world is a fascinating world, and I think the community is full of people with a lot of passion and understanding, so I just find the conversations and discussions to be so interesting. This basically summarises what I love about being a moderator!”

Her motto: “When life gives you lemons, make orange juice and leave the world wondering how the hell you did it.”

You can follow her on LinkedIn.

Brendan McCracken, Community Moderator

Brendan is from Kitchener, Ontario. He is studying Economics and Geography at Sir Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario and is in his fourth year.

Brendan loves to compete and bring new and fun ideas to the table. He is all about bettering himself and his community and is interested in leading groups of people with a like minded-goal to achieve success. He loves (American) football and plays for his school and aspires to play professionally. In his spare time he likes to snowboard, hang out with friends and teammates, workout, and read.

“I love working at Kin and in the cryptocurrency realm because it is such a new concept and is still in its infancy, which means that every day the crypto world is changing and evolving. That interests me because I am constantly learning and understanding. Being fairly new to the KIN team, it has been fun listening and watching some of the Veterans on our team and gaining knowledge throughout the process.”

His Motto: “Win Everyday In Everything You Do!”

You can follow me on: My social media game is weak… :/

Introducing: Community Team was originally published in Kin Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“I knew right away that Kin was something I had to be a part of because it was the first time a major league company was going all-in on cryptocurrency.”

It’s obvious, our community is the driving force of Kin. Without their voices, conversations would never be sparked, ideas would not come to life, and Kin’s uniqueness would never shine. So, now is time to shed some light on one of our biggest voices in the community: Dillon. He is a constant source of fresh air. Whether he is sticking up for Kin in our Telegram channels, creating new content on our subreddit, or sharing his thoughtful opinion on Medium, he is always around and the community feels his presence.

Dillon is one in a million. This blockchain enthusiast has been an advocate for Kin from the very beginning. We first discovered him when he selflessly wrote a killer FAQ for our subscribers on Reddit. “The Kin community was growing rapidly around the turn of the new year, so I wrote the FAQ, hoping it would be the first place every new or prospective member would look and have all their basic questions answered.” From that moment on, Dillon has been a sort of celebrity here at the Kin Community Team.

After his successful FAQ on Reddit, he decided to write “The Magic of Kin” as his next step. Definitely check that one out…“I had given everyone the What, When, Where, and How. But there were, and still are, a lot of folks out there that haven’t wrapped their heads around the Why. And I get it- when I first found Kin, I didn’t realize what actually set it apart from potential competitors. At first glance, the KRE doesn’t really hit you. Then you put yourself in the shoes of a big-time mobile app that’s failing to monetize, and the incentives model suddenly clicks. The Medium article is an attempt to bring everyone to that ‘eureka!’ moment.”

And he’s remarkably humble too, “I’m just a regular guy that designs fire sprinkler systems when I’m not spending too much time on the Kin subreddit or playing PUBG.”

You can follow Dillon on Reddit and Medium

So you see, our community is the reason we are moving forward. You, yes you the one who’s reading this, are part of the revolution. Kin is becoming more than just a project, but a whole new world just waiting to be discovered by the masses. What will YOUR contribution be? Give us your thoughts, share your wisdom, and keep the Kin mojo flowing.

Our Community: Going Above and Beyond was originally published in Kin Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are back at it as we introduce the next team in our Kin stratosphere: The Kin Ecosystem. After we revealed to you the faces of our Standalone App team, we dove right in and asked our next group to get creative and pull out all the stops. We even have a few different languages floating around in this introduction post so get your google translate ready as you meet the next integral component of our Kin team!

Noa Kessler, Product Manager

Noa has been a part of Kik for just over a month now. Her previous role was at IronSource where she was responsible for product innovation, planning, and development in the Advertiser’s Division. When she’s not at work, she designs and sews clothes whilst obsessively listening to true crime podcasts.

“हस श्वसिहि मंदं गच्छ च.”

You can follow her on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noakessler/

Yohay Barsky, Technical Domain Owner

Yohay is interested in areas where advanced technology and ingenuity collaborate with product to achieve the best market fit. Experienced in harnessing team’s effort, dedication, problem solving and out of the box thinking to continuously deliver great products.

When he’s not at work he’s practicing yoga and occasionally surfing (when the world aligns perfectly).

“Keep it simple.”

You can follow him on: LinkedIn, Medium

Lior Aviram, Senior Web and Backend Developer

Lior is an innovative web developer and technology evangelist who has been living and breathing technology since the age of 7. He’s been with Rounds/Kik for more than 5 years and has worked on everything from mobile and web products, to browser extensions, to the core video infrastructure. Lior has over 14 years of experience in the hi-tech and technology industry, 7 of which were focused on web with an emphasis on front-end development and strong UX awareness.

“Don’t be stupid”

Doody Parizada, Head of Backend

Doody has been at Kik and Rounds for almost 7 years. He has touched all parts of the product, but his main focus is on backend, architecture and handstands. He’s a top notch Software Engineer, who believes that programmers and code can live in harmony. He is familiar with multiple programming languages such as C++, Java, C# and Python.

“吃喝玩乐.”

Avishy Leuchter, QA Team Leader

Avishy is the first QA guy to set foot at Rounds before it became Kik Israel.

He mostly likes to smile, say hello in the mornings, chit chat over coffee, make his own lunch, and find out what is not working well in the product and for some odd reason he actually gets paid for that, go figure…

When he is not at work, or on his way to or from work, he loves to play and watch sports, relax in front of the TV, and just chill with his loved ones!

“Breathe in and breathe out as much as possible so you can make it to the following day. The rest will sort itself out.”

Oren Zakay, Sr. Android Developer

Oren holds Android in his heart and has a Kotliner soul. He likes to explore new tech and experience the entirety of the product. He focuses mainly on the client side, but is coding also in Go and Python.

When he’s not at work, you will find him learning new stuff or having a beer and watching TV.

“Быть самим собой и брать от жизни все”

You can follow him on LinkedIn.

Elaz Yifrach, Sr. iOS Developer

Elaz is a Rounds and Kik veteran (since 2011). His main focus is on iOS but also loves product as well. His passion is guiding users to the right direction with the right set of tools, including users of his own code.

When he’s not at work, you can reach him at 555-dont-call, no but seriously, he’s probably putting his two sweet girls to bed so call quietly.

“Give me six cups of coffee and I’ll give you a motto.”

Elad Weizman, Product Designer

Elad has been at Kik and Rounds for 4 years as a Product Designer.
After a decade in this profession, he is trying to keep an open mind and learn new things every day. His day-to-day work is designing a user experience and interfaces.

He is an early bird, music junkie, amature painter, basketball player, and occasional gardener.

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”

You can follow him: In real life

Introducing: Kin Ecosystem Team was originally published in Kin Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We, at Kin, believe that the only way to succeed is by doing things together. As we’ve put it in the past — “win together by working together.”

Obviously, our motto tells a lot about the way we work internally, but it also says a thing or two about our entire culture and the way we look at you — our supporters — and your role in this. We feel you’re an integral part of the project and keeping you in the know is key for us. For this reason we decided to open not only our code, but also our office for you to see who we are and what we’re all about.

Netanel’s post describes the structure of our teams — 3 in total:

• Standalone App team
• Ecosystem team
• Blockchain team

Over the upcoming weeks you’ll get a comprehensive understanding of each team’s product vision. It’s a post that will be written by each team’s product manager and will include an extensive breakdown and layout — for the first time — of what we’re actually building here. Yesterday we shared the Standalone App team’s vision and goals. But today we provide you with a behind the scenes look of the team members.

Sarit Ariel, Product Manager

Sarit has been a part of Kik for just over a month now and brings tons of experience in building amazing products. She’s spent her entire product career (over a decade) building products from scratch and creating new experiences.
Sarit holds a B.Sc in Industrial Engineering (information systems) from the Technion, and is also a long distance hiking enthusiast and beer geek.
You can follow her on her Twitter @saritariel and Linkedin.

“You only live once. Keep walking.”

Berry Ventura Lev, Technical Domain Owner

Berry combines her experience and love for mobile software development with her passion to continuously bring out the best in people. She has 15 years of experience in software development and tech leading roles, with the last 5 years in mobile.
She mentors @ she-codes.org, an organization promoting female developers in the Israeli high-tech industry, and also enjoys cycling with her hubby and two kids, playing the piano or spending some quiet time on the beach.
You can follow her on Linkedin.

“Always on the lookout for new challenges that will take me out of my comfort zone.”

Shay Baz, Android Engineer

Shay is a senior Android developer, with more than 15 years experience, super passionate about Android and making sure everything is pixel perfect. He loves doing complex UI, building delightful products for users and adding fun animations. Prior to Kik, Shay worked at Rounds Android app.
Outside of work, Shay loves to travel and explore city life around the globe. Oh, and he’s also a collector of limited edition Absolut Vodka bottles.

“You can tell if someone is a true friend if he helps you expand your vodka bottle collection.”

Natan Rolnik, iOS Engineer

Natan is a programmer with 8 years of iOS development experience — in both Objective-C and Swift — and passionate about beautiful UIs and delightful animations. He also likes to build things in Ruby and JavaScript, mostly in NodeJS and React — technologies that he has learnt while building his pet projects.
When not working, you will find Natan taking care of his family, or playing soccer, tennis, squash, or running.
You can follow him on Twitter, where he tweets mostly about iOS development resources: @natanrolnik

“Stay hungry, stay foolish.”

Ami Blonder, Backend Engineer

Ami has over a decade of experience in various programming languages and platforms. Versed in C++, Python, golang, and even C#, Ami is a versatile programmer that is up for all kinds of delinquencies.
In addition, Ami really loves cheese and baked goods. and cats. Oh ok — and chocolate too.
You can follow him on Linkedin.

“If it’s not chocolate, it’s not breakfast.”

Aryeh Katz, QA & Automation Engineer

Aryeh made his first website at the age of 13 (FrontPage & Dreamweaver anyone?), and by the age of 17 he started freelancing as a full-time job developing in PHP, JavaScript, Python, Java and others. For the past 7 years, Aryeh had the opportunity to build a huge recipes portal where he was in charge of developing everything by himself.
When he’s not working, he will most likely search YouTube for interesting videos, from Science (Smarter Every Day) to “Slow mo guys” (You gotta love those! ).
You can follow him on Linkedin.

“He who says he can and he who says he can’t are both usually right.”

Shiran Sela, Product Designer

Shiran is UI, UX and branding passionate, using design thinking to simplify interfaces and create engaging experiences. She graduated from Shenkar College of Engineering and Design with a BA in visual communication design. She worked as a design lead for tech software startups experienced with B2B and B2C products, native mobile, hybrid, and desktop apps.
When not working, Shiran loves to experiment in the kitchen, currently getting better in pottery, and a pilates fan :)
You can follow her Linkedin and Instagram

“The best part in my job is to be a part of products that enrich people’s lives.”

Introducing: Kin Standalone App Team was originally published in Kin Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“I wanted to do the Wiki mainly because I figured many people would google Kin, and a wiki article would be a good place for them to get a summary of the project”

Returning to us after a phenomenal co-written guest post, we have Alex, a Kinner who believes in the vision of Kin and has a passion to teach the public about all that Kin has to offer. Alex is a crypto enthusiast who has a passion to share the truth and explore projects he sees massive potential in.

Check it out, Alex took it one step further and created this Wikipedia page to highlight who we are and what we are about at Kin. This generous gesture was realized completely out of pure kindness. Talk about kinship! If you would like to contribute to Alex’s creation, feel free to add your two cents to the Wikipedia page. This can be a team effort to make it a truly community driven project. It can only grow from here!

To all of our fellow Kinners, Kin-curious folk, and beyond, we would LOVE to hear and feature your voice too. We already have such a tuned in and enthusiastic community, but this is only the beginning. If we can get the sparks to flourish, the flame will only ignite further and the voice of Kin will truly spread like wildfire! We are all kindred spirits here brought together by the potential and belief in Kin. We value our community and believe it can keep on self generating a positive buzz with all the right intentions. Together, we are proving Kin’s worth, usability, and value of being a digital sharing economy of equal opportunity for all.

Kinner shoutout : Kinners in the Spotlight was originally published in Kin Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.